¡Caravana a Guerrero! Nov 2011

 

So Pastor Victor, also known as Papá here at Refuge Ranch, leads these teams of Medical Missionaries around to different places in México every month or two.  (I think there are ten trips planned for next year, plus four local ones as well)  And he was pretty excited to have me here, because it meant they would have worship on these trips.   I've been on one of these before two Aprils ago, and got to do children's outreach.  It was awesome!!!

I tried to tell Victor that nothing good happens before 10am, but Worship was at 8am, there wasn't much time to practice, and there was insistence that I learn specific songs to play that I didn't know before.  So there were a lot of mistakes.  The most embarrassing one was butchering "I can only imagine" (in Spanish), partly because I don't really like the song to begin with, so I just decided not to practice it beforehand.  :/  Moral of the story, if you dislike a song, and have reasons not to play it, just don't play it.

During the first couple days, there wasn't a lot for me to do during the day.  I helped man a table of donated clothing on day 1.  Somebody had to do it--sort of.  But it wasn't what I was made for.  (which was attested by the refolding done by some of the local ladies when we went to lunch which halved the wasted space)  So on day 2 I tried to hang out with some of the local kids, going to play soccer with a couple of them and having some alright conversation.   One of the boys talked about the ritual bull-slaughtering that goes along with some of the saints' days locally.  He mentioned it might of even been St. Francis' day--which lead to probably one of the better chances I had to share about life and God, because I'm wearing a Franciscan cross from my time at Covenant House, and, as the story goes, Francis didn't believe in killing fleas that were biting him, he had that much respect for nature.  (So...animal sacrifice...yeah.)   Later that night I taught the kids, mostly from the family that hosted the local church, how to play Ninja and we played this game I played at Kid's camp in Nizhny Tagil this summer where you try to knock over a bottle with a sandal (that was a big hit).  Days three and four I got involved coloring and making paper airplanes with kids waiting for their parents with the doctors.  That was fun, but unfortunately I only had three pages to color, I wasn't prepared with my own stuff to do, and well, there wasn't enough space to play games.  So unlike the previous trip, there wasn't a spontaneous community of kids, hours of games, and good convos on the sidewalk.  :/

On the last night, a group of five of us dressed up as clowns and did a children's outreach of sorts, with a loudspeaker in the town center.  Our clowns were cool, and kids got a very basic overview of the gospel, but I felt very out of synch.  For one, I broke my camera and then was unsuccessfully taking pictures for someone else during the show.  For two, I decided not to be a clown because I reckoned I would be better off--and better at serving and loving on kids--as the guy in the front row with the kids in his lap, and the guy who's spinning kids around before and after.  I was raised doing VBS with 110 kids asking you for piggy-back rides simultaneously, so I reckoned I could give some vueltas and form some relationships.  But the clowns gave out lollipops and balloons, so I couldn't swing or flip anyone.  I was also dumbfounded, because there were hundreds of kids who showed up, and I was like "umm...why wasn't I here hanging out in this plaza all week," and also, just kinda frustrated by the lack of relationship in the way we did outreach.  I did end up with one of the guys I colored with on my lap, one of the girls who played ninja with us with her elbow on my knee, and Paloma leaning on my other side.

Paloma is one of the happiest people I've ever met.  She's 12 and has a mental disability, and although I didn't really understand much of what she was trying to tell me, she was super-excited that I even tried to understand, and decided at that point that I would be her Tío (Uncle).  Today at dinner Julie shared about a friend of hers who is adopting a kid with downs-syndrome.  I feel about as comfortable around people with downs or Autism as I do around old people--in other words, not really at all.  But this is the second time I've met someone "handicapped" with great joy and a heart that sings.  And I think, some day, some similar people will become a part of my life.  (It's in the DNA of the some of the teams I'm looking into working with in central asia already.)

Worship on the last day, however, was really cool.  I was able to share and lead part of my translation of Renuevame, and we also sang "No me Soltaras" and a couple other really good songs.  Everyone liked it I think!  :)

All in all, God was really speaking to me and drawing me closer to him during this time.  It challenged me to live by faith, to pray and seek and follow.  It made me rely on God, let my to-do list go, and not check my computer every five minutes.  But it was really frustrating to feel out of sync, like I wasn't quite in tune with--something.  I've read so much on outreach to children lately, and on aid in general, it was hard to figure out where I fit and what I believed in as for our mission.  I remembered and was reminded how the last missions trip in Mexico, my friend Sami and I felt out of sync with our teams, because we had prayed in faith and seen God do amazing things the year before, but our teams didn't seem to have the same expectations.  Some things were as usual.  I was more connected to the locals than most--I looked for opportunities and tried to pray with some of my new friends, and I tried to put together a youth group for some of the teens, but there wasn't the space for it.  So I was kinda frustrated, because although I had a lot of good conversations with the other missionaries, I don't feel like I did much of value outside that circle.  All in all, as a team I think we did more good than harm, and encouraged quite a few people, and many prayed to come to faith.  So I thank God for that, and most of all, just that he hasn't given up on me!  :)

More to come!  I haven't even finished talking about our missions trip!